NYC Service Design Jam 2016

The Service Design Jam is a weekend-long workshop held every year in late Feb/early March. The goal is to develop new services. Based on an abstract theme, the annual Service Design jam consists of 48 hours of straight brain storming, user research, prototyping, and iterating.

The Problem Statement

How might we create a offline, immersive experience that allows people to feel more connected to nature?

The Research

As a team, asked a lot of questions:What makes people feel more at peace? What are the barriers to accessing nature and other peaceful experiences?Why do people want to access peaceful experiences?

We went to Central Park and asked people why they were there. Apart from the answer, "It's just the place to go in New York!", a lot of people talked about it's peace and serenity compared to the rest of the city.

As New Yorkers and Americans, we know that two of the greatest challenges today are stress and lack of time. A lot of our research also told us technology was somehow connected to that stress, and people wanted a break from it.

Talking through our insights and our research, we came upon the idea of bringing people's favorite peaceful places to them. We hopped on the subscription box trend and mindfulness movement and created Sense Path.

The Solution

Sense Path was the solution to people's needs for a break from a stressful life, "bringing" them through their senses to their favorite places.

They'd fill out a short survey and get a customized box with a scent, touchpad, audio, and a vision deprivation mask. Each box would allow the person to "escape" to their favorite place from anywhere, and, hopefully, be able to take the peacefulness with them.

The thing that makes it different than other mindfulness products is that is very low tech. No phone, no app. It also doesn't mention meditation, to make it more accessible to people who are skeptical of this old practice/new trend.

NYC Service Design Jam 2015

Based on a theme, the jam consisted of 48 hours of straight brain storming, user research, prototyping, and iterating. We picked the theme of 'human interaction' and we were interested in exploring how people often feel more comfortable interacting when their is an object that breaks that boundary.

Our research found that New Yorkers don't want to interact with strangers in the subway, but they are curious about other people -- what they are thinking, listening to, etc.

We wanted to build something that was a simple engagement, satisfied curiosity, and was non-intrusive to other riders.